The Cofounders of the Women's March Talk About Facing Backlash Over Inclusivity

When cochairs Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland organized the Women’s March in January, they intended to send a clear message to Donald Trump that they, and millions of other women, would not sit back and let their rights be infringed upon. Though women throughout the globe came out droves to support this message, that doesn't mean the cofounders didn't face a lot of criticism. On Thursday at the Vanity Fair Founders Fair, the women explained just how much backlash they got in response to their international event.

“We got critiqued from every spectrum,” said Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American-Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist. “Men were critiquing us saying, ‘Why is this a women’s march?’ We had women of color critiquing us saying, ‘Are you really centering women of color?’ We had other white women saying, ‘Well, shouldn’t this be about Hillary Clinton?’”

In Sarsour's eyes, however, these critiques were welcome—they helped facilitate a much-needed (and often unspoken) dialogue about race. She continued, "People said, ‘Why are you being divisive all of a sudden?’…We wanted to talk about race because we think the reason why we’re in this situation is because you can’t talk about reproductive rights or reproductive justice without talking about race. You can’t talk about equal pay without talking about race.”

But having these conversations and having women from all walks of life show up in solidarity with groups who have been marginalized are two separate things—ones that the Women's March cofounders concede they were not able to bridge as successfully as they had hoped. And this even applied one of the most visible symbols of the March: the pink pussy hats.

“There was a conversation about the pink hats. Because some of us women have different color…hats,” said Carmen Perez, a civil rights advocate and the executive director of The Gathering for Justice.